With deadlines for Psychology Summer 2025 internships approaching, we would like to reflect on summer 2024 internships in the Applied Memory and Cognition Lab (Dr Eva Rubínová). Here, we highlight the work of two Level 3 students at the School of Psychology: Ms O. Victory Ulamen (supported by the British Psychological Society Undergraduate Research Assistantship Scheme), and Ms Madeline Campagna (supported by the Discovering Research Scholarship).
Both students completed their internships in the newly established Virtual Reality lab. They both worked on research in the eyewitness memory area. Victory focused on assessing the effectiveness of the timeline technique in facilitating reports of interpersonal interactions; Madeline focused on assessing the impact of emotion on memory. Both students worked with virtual reality stimuli that were newly developed in collaboration with students from the Saxion Extended Reality Lab.
Stimuli used in both studies portrayed interpersonal interactions involving conflict in two variants. One variant—aimed to elicit negative emotion—portrayed interactions consistent with early stages of domestic abuse. The other variant involved situations where conflict was resolved without abusive behaviours. Virtual reality is increasingly used in eyewitness memory research as they enable a more immersive experience for participants in comparison to watching a video on a computer screen.
Within their 8-week long internships, Victory and Madeline preregistered their studies, prepared all study materials, developed interviewing schedules and coding manuals, and piloted the study. In addition to building their research and writing skills, they also developed flexibility and resilience as they navigated the intricacies that come along with virtual reality technology. Victory has submitted an abstract to present results from her internship study at the conference of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition SARMAC 2025 in Kildare, Ireland.
Both Victory and Madeline are now completing their Level 4 theses in the Applied Memory and Cognition Lab, working on studies that follow up on their internship research. They also both hope to continue their research journey with a PhD in the next academic year, and we wish them all the best with their applications!
